Rebranding Branding - The Distility Blog

1day1brand system delivers an innovative and collaborative process for building brands

TORONTO, ONTARIO (July 21st, 2010) -- MaRS, a Toronto-based not-for-profit innovation centre, is pleased to announce that one of its clients, Distility Branding, has closed a round of angel funding totalling $350,000. Proceeds of the investment will provide operations support and allow Distility to further its marketing and sales efforts.

The Distility team is comprised of self-titled “brand technologists” with a passion for inventing new workflows that make branding quick, collaborative and trouble-free–a passion that led to the development of Distility 1day1brand, a breakthrough business method and collaborative software system that makes it possible for teams to develop a brand promise, position and personality in just one day.

“The recent funding will allow us to extend our workflows to make even more branding activities quick, collaborative and trouble-free,” says Axle Davids, CEO of Distility. “Furthermore, it provides the capital for us to aggressively expand our sales networks and pursue businesses and marketing partners who find traditional branding too slow, complicated and expensive. Lance Laking and the MaRS advisory team have been committed throughout the process.”

Distility has been a client of MaRS since 2009 and recently moved its offices to the MaRS Incubator. Through the guidance of the MaRS Advisory Team and lead advisor Lance Laking, Distility is now poised to shake up the traditional branding industry.

“I always felt that marketing and branding service firms had an aura of ‘black magic’ about them, making the process more complex, time consuming and expensive,” says Lance Laking. “Distility is looking to disrupt this perception by making branding more tangible and affordable for small to medium-sized businesses. Distility’s technology makes the branding process engaging and scalable.” MaRS worked closely with Axle Davids and the private investor to ensure Distility was investment-ready.

For further information, please contact:
Andrew F. Stewart
Distility
T. 416-413-7777, ext. 3
E. andrew@distility.com

We're delighted by the response so far to Brand Scammed! Have a look in the comments section below for some of the quotes we've received by some of the best minds in business. And please add your quote to theirs. You'll be in great company!

By Axle Davids, CEO & Brand Technologist, Distility Branding

This scam is by far the biggest of all Brand Scams and leads to the worst brands of all.

The typical story is a client who needs a branding deliverable like a website or lead generation campaign. They ask their internal resource or a vendor to do a logo, tagline, or “figure out our brand” while they are at it.

The vendor may be well intentioned but ignorant about brand analysis, strategy or standards. They may be overconfident, a branding wannabe who figures that since they have worked “on a brand” they are capable of creating one. Or they may be cynical, preferring to avoid the heavy thinking and collaboration of brand analysis and brand strategy, and just get a billable deliverable out the door.

But the real person to blame here is the buyer. If you still think branding is just a logo, or a slogan, or a brainstorm, you are kickin’ it old- school – and not in a cool retro way.

To read about more Brand Scams or download our new eBook "Brand Scammed!" Click here.

By Axle Davids, CEO & Brand Technologist, Distility Branding

I hate that I love branding.

Branding is so loveable when it fuses a team's passion with a customer's need. When it separates that team from the pack. When it imbues everything they do with an authentic sense of personality. When it helps good companies and good causes win the day.

But I hate the bad side of branding with a passion! When it is practiced as black-art voodoo or absurdly complex pseudo-science. When it is all fast talk followed by slow-motion. When it it is ruined from the inside by politics, conformists and brandwashers.

The 2010 Awards of Excellence, recognizing outstanding accomplishments in entrepreneurship, were presented last night at the 2nd Annual TBDC Awards Gala.

From innovation, to community impact, to unyielding perseverance, the Toronto Business Development Centre Awards Gala honours TBDC graduate business owners who embody the 'Essence of Entrepreneurship'.

Distility CEO, Axle Davids was honoured to receive the Excellence in Innovation Award for developing our Distility 1day1brand workflow.

 

1. Your target customer
2. Their need
3. Their frame of reference
4. Your dramatic difference(s)
5. Your reason(s) to believe

You'll note that we've set the Droid's frame of reference as "iPhone". Before we explain why, we need to cover the fundamentals.

Frame of reference can be dead simple or hard - it depends on the nature of your brand. As the name suggests, it is the target audience's in-built mental frame of reference for your brand. Your frame of reference for Coke-a-Cola is likely "soft-drink". Your frame of reference for Nintendo Wii is likely "gaming system".

Bad frame. Bad brand.

The wrong frame of reference reduces brand awareness because your target audience doesn't immediately "get it." Perhaps the most famous example of this situation is TiVo. Today the idea of a PVR - Personal Video Recorder - is a commonly understood frame of reference. But when TiVO launched they ignored the importance of frame of reference. They should have used "VCR" as the customer's frame of reference saying, "TiVO is like a VCR that can also...". Sure it may have hurt their pride to lump themselves into the category of the technology they were disrupting, but it would have increased awareness and consideration of their brand. Instead, it took a long time, too long, for their brand to catch-on.

Frame of reference frames the competition too

One very helpful quality assurance test of your frame of reference is the competitors it creates. This is because the frame of reference determines the competition. So if TiVO had used VCR as its' frame of reference, buyers would have seen other VCR brands as the competition and TiVO could have given their marketing some bite. But without a quality frame of reference, buyers weren't sure with what to compare TiVo. This is also a great reminder of the essence of positioning: to position your brand against others.

Closer to home, a marketing agency client of ours was of two minds - some felt that they were a "branding agency", others a "digital agency". So we had to have a conversation about their frame of reference. It was the discussion about competitors that resolved the split. I said "If you are a branding agency, then you are going to compete against Interbrand, BBDO, and JWT. And you are going to compete for television spots, direct mail, and lots more. Is that the kind of business you want to pitch?" The answer was a clear "no." Their portfolio was perfect for winning against digital agencies like Organic. Thus "digital agency" became the frame of reference they use for their positioning statement.

When considering your frame of reference ask yourself:

1. Is it one your target audience can instantly grasp without explanation?
2. Is it the right frame of reference?
3. Does it define competitors for your brand?

In my next post, I'll tackle the frame of reference used for the Apple iPhone and the Motorola Droid. Both are great examples of strategic positioning wherein frame of reference plays a critical role.

1. Your target customer
2. Their need
3. Their frame of reference
4. Your dramatic difference(s)
5. Your reason(s) to believe

Together they give us a positioning statement such as the one I've intuited for the Motorola Droid:

For the technology leader who needs the latest and greatest device, the Motorola Droid is the iphone killer, with a giant screen and the ability to run multiple applications with ease.

This week, I'd like to breakdown the statement components, starting with...

The customer
Of course it all starts with getting the customer right! And this is where all too often it goes wrong, especially in B2B branding, where targeting a job title is very helpful.

Can you describe the customer?
Ask yourself, "How well does your firm know the customer?"

Can your team describe the customer clearly with a good sense of their age, education, aspirations and pains? Can you easily find real examples of your "typical" customer? You may not have the budget of Motorola, but that doesn't excuse your team from doing their homework.

Does the customer have a pain or desire you resolve?
Although the target customer's pain or desire is not explicitly mentioned in the positioning statement, it is very important that it exist. A customer that has no pain or desire for your solution is the wrong customer. A vegan is not a good target customer for a brand that is made out of meat. In the case of the Motorola Droid, they know that iphone super-users can be pained by the lack of multi-tasking. They know that while it isn't a pain, a larger screen is something they desire.

Are you really sure?
Ask your team: "Have we missed the blindingly obvious?" For instance, if you are developing a solution for routine laboratory analysis, is the primary target audience the laboratory technician who uses the solution? Or is it the laboratory manager who makes the buying decision? If you aren't sure, you must figure it out before you do any further branding.

What about Motorola? They have targeted a tiny market - disaffected iPhone users. Why wouldn't they copy Apple? After all, when Apple introduced the iPhone, they originally took great pains to sell it as a... phone. Apple didn't want to scare people away by being technologic out the gate. But in the case of the Droid, the choice of this niche customer was conscientious and in keeping with technology marketing best practices when introducing a cutting edge device in a highly competitive market - they targeted the early-adopters, the super influencers. And since - secretly - Motorola knows it can't kill the iPhone, it is actually trying to make the early adopters evangelists for the Droid brand, effectively pushing the desirability of Blackberry, Palm, Windows, Nokia and others down in the mind of the market.

It is key to remember that positioning must be adaptive. Unlike a brand promise or personality which should be designed to endure, positioning should change as it needs in reaction to, and anticipation of changes with the customers, competitors, and the brand's own capabilities. Motorola will soon expand its positioning to bring more customers into the fold.

 

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The reason so many mission statements are dumb is because the idea that every company needs one is dumb.

There are some organizations that need to decide who they are, why they are here, and what they do. Salt of the earth stuff. For them mission statements make sense.

Some companies are fueled by vision, and are attracted to vision statements. Specifically, what they aim to concretely manifest in the future.

Others are driven by their values, so doing their corporate values makes perfect sense.

Purely competitive firms can focus their day around their positioning statement.

Passionate firms can seek a statement that combines their passion with their customer's need. They are perfect candidates for a brand promise statement.

But does a company need all of the above to succeed?

I believe that marketers and branders must be pragmatic. Understand the culture, the need, and only then recommend the simplest thing that will work.